CfP – Anchoring New Cinema History Deadline for proposals, 15 November 2018Letters of acceptance/rejection, 1 December 2018

The HoMER Network invites submissions for general paper entries, as well as a designated roundtable, panels, and workshops to be presented at the 2019 conference, which will take place at The University of the Bahamas from 26-28 June 2019.

New Cinema History, as an approach focusing “on the circulation and consumption of film” and examining “cinema as a site of social and cultural exchange” (Richard Maltby, 2011) has turned out to be very productive. It brought together both young and veteran scholars who believed that it was more fruitful writing film history with an eye for the social, economic and geographical aspects of cinema cultures, than merely an art history of the moving image or a critical reading of films. At the last HoMER@NECS conference in Amsterdam, members of the panel ‘New Cinema History: What’s Next?’ called for more theoretical and methodological grounding of our research. In the Homer 2019 conference Anchoring New Cinema History we would like to start answering that call. Presentations are welcome to critically explore the conference theme of Anchoring New Cinema History through the interdisciplinary lens of academic Film and Cinema Studies, Social Geography, Memory Studies and Economic History, etc.

Since its beginning the HoMER network has been instrumental in bringing together researchers working in the New Cinema History tradition, not just as a platform to present their work but also as place to meet colleagues to collaborate with. In the upcoming HoMER conference we propose to stress the network function of HoMER, both in welcoming young scholars as in creating interdisciplinary opportunities for collaborative work. The 2019 HoMER conference aims to exploit the established strong connections of people, and places the HoMER network can offer, in order to invite new and old members to engage in new collaborative research. This will be articulated in two main streams:

The SPACES and PLACES Stream of the conference will aim to investigate the geography of cinema. This can be expressed both through the exploration of familiar and new spaces of cinemas, such as cinema theatres but also pop-up cinemas, community cinemas, and virtual cinemas. It will also include both well researched geographical areas and new territories and locations, such as South and Central America, Africa, Central Asia and South-East Asia. These new uncharted territories will be of great value on their own to reconnoitre the position of different countries in relation to cinema practises. They will also provide connections and comparisons with existing body of work on Europe, America, Canada and Australia.

By looking at this extended geography of cinema, possible topics and questions to explore might include (but are certainly not limited to):

The THEORIES AND METHODOLOGIES Stream of the HoMER conference will provide an opportunity to reflect on and discuss some key areas of research within the HoMER network, with the aim of suggesting new directions in the field and developing new theoretical and methodological approaches, or reintroducing and adapting existing approaches that proved to be useful. These key areas can be suggested by members when submitting a paper proposal (or just by emailing the HoMER Co-ordinators). A dedicated session of this stream will include:

Small group discussion (1 hour) on the key areas, followed by presentations (10 min) to the HoMER participants and a further discussion (20 min). Possible key areas to explore might include (but are certainly not limited to): Cinema and Memory; the Economics and business of film; Programming and film popularity; Paratextual analysis; the Digital challenge; Distribution and spreading of films; Impact of research to non-academic audiences.

Moreover, in a speed dating session, junior researchers will be given the opportunity to team up with experts to discuss their individual methodological and theoretical concerns. If you are interested in this (both juniors and experts), please email the Co-ordinators.

16-18 October 2018, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

Professor Nicholas Cull, University of Southern California, and President of the International Association for Media and History

Dr Giora Goodman, Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel

An international conference on “Film, public diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli conflict: Historical and international perspectives” will be hosted by the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA on 16-18 October 2018. The conference is supported by the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee in Israel, the International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST), and at USC the Center on Public Diplomacy and Center for International Studies.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is seventy years old in 2018. Over the decades, a great many scholars and journalists have looked into the role that the news media have played in the conflict. By comparison, relatively few scholars have explored the part played by cinema. This conference focuses not only on film’s part in the Arab-Israeli conflict but also on how film has interacted with public diplomacy and propaganda. The conference aims to go far beyond the examination of particular feature films and documentaries – though that is an essential dimension. It seeks to look “behind the scenes” to examine how governments and groups have used film as a publicity tool; to assess the role that actors, producers, agents and directors have played in the conflict both on and off the screen; and to consider cinema’s political and cultural impact on the conflict.

Hollywood is obviously an important part of this story, and by holding the conference in Los Angeles we hope to involve contemporary filmmakers, diplomats and lobby organizations based in the city that are engaged in a variety of ways in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the conference will look at how cinemas from different parts of the world have treated the Arab-Israeli conflict. This will enable comparative analysis and point to the part played by film in the international “war of images” that has surrounded the Arab-Israeli conflict since its inception.

Our approach is interdisciplinary, and we welcome proposals for papers from scholars of all fields, including History, Middle East studies, Israel studies, Public Diplomacy and Propaganda studies, International Affairs, Film studies, Literature, and the Social Sciences. Possible topics for panels and papers include but are not limited to:

Key feature films and documentaries about the Arab-Israeli conflict

Cinema’s direct and oblique treatments of the conflict

National film industries’ different takes on the conflict

Film activism

Film celebrity off-screen activism

Film as a public diplomacy and propaganda tool

Cinema and censorship/boycotts

Film and issues of image and Nation Brands

The working language of the conference will be English. We welcome individual proposals for 20-minute presentations, as well as 90-minute panels. Proposals for individual presentations should not exceed 300 words, while those for panels should be a maximum of 1000 words. All contributors should include a brief (250-300 word) autobiographical paragraph and the contributor’s academic affiliation and email. All of this should be sent to Professor Tony Shaw at a.t.shaw@herts.ac.uk.

Université Paris 2

92 rue d’Assas 75006 Paris

Deadline: 7 December 2017

The first edition of the Symposium of the Society for Media History took place on May 26 and 27 2015; it sought to draw up an inventory of institutional and historiographical developments in media history since it first emerged and to explore current themes of study.

In a context of strong criticism of the media, including the accusation of bias – political and economic- this second edition seeks to cross-examine the way in which media, rather, have been the flagship of social change, of how to conceive and fashion another world.

Fifty years after the events of May and June 1968, the Society for Media History invites researchers to reflect on the links between media, utopia and experiments. The call for papers is not solely intended for media historians; it seeks to be a venue for as many different viewpoints and disciplines as possible. The scientific committee will favor proposals based on a corpus or a specific field, illuminating little known aspects of the history of the media or various epistemologies.

Proposals should preferably be placed in one of the following areas:

Alternative Media and Countercultures

Media and Utopia/Dystopia

Technical Experiments

Revolutions in the field of Media Studies

Submission

Each abstract (3000 characters max.) should have a title, an explicit problematic and a short bibliography. No proposal may have more than three authors. The abstracts will be blind peer reviewed.

You may also submit a proposal for a panel on a specific topic (three proposals minimum).

The deadline for submission is November 24.Authors are invited to submit their titles, abstracts and cv electronically on the homepage of the conference: